Pao Houa Her: My grandfather turned into a tiger … and other illusions

Pao Houa Her’s first major monograph, My grandfather turned into a tiger … and other illusions, explores the fundamental concepts of home and belonging: illusion, desire, and loss. Pao Houa Her’s work draws inspiration from a myriad of sources: apocryphal family lore; portraits of the artist’s community and self; and reimagined landscapes, with Minnesota and Northern California standing in for Laos. The compelling and personal narratives are grounded in the traditions and contemporary metaphors of the Hmong diasporic community. My grandfather turned into a tiger brings together four of the artist’s major series, including the title work which reimagines her family’s history before leaving Laos. Other work deals with a scandal within the Hmong community in which hundreds of elders were swindled as part of a fraudulent investment scheme built around the promise of a new Hmong homeland. In another series, tonally rich black-and-white still lifes of silk flowers collected by her mother are presented alongside images of flowers that adorn the digitally manipulated, hyper-colored popular backdrops used in Hmong photo studios and on dating apps. This beautifully designed monograph showcases Her’s keen eye on the line between ersatz and authenticity; as the artist has stated, photography is “a truth if you want it to be a truth.” My grandfather turned into a tiger is the result of the Next Step Award, a partnership between Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, in collaboration with the 7|G Foundation. Each cover is unique, featuring up to thirty-two jacket iterations, but is anchored by the same sticker on the front and back.  

Format: Paperback / softback
Number of pages: 124
Number of images: 80
Publication date: 2024-01-23
Measurements: 6.6 x 8.9 x 0.5 inches
ISBN: 9781597115650

“A tangible homeland may not exist but Her’s synthetic approximations of it—perfect and unchanging—hold immense possibility.”—Frieze

“Through the artist’s lens, we’re invited to explore an intricate tapestry of cultural and personal experience, where each image serves as a portal to understanding, reflection, and connection.”—Aesthetica

“The images truly sing.”—Hyperallergic

“A portrait of uprootedness and the measures taken to survive in a new soil.”—ArtReview Asia

“The plurality of the design represents an appealing exploration of the possibilities of photography, from documentation to inventiveness.”—Leica Fotografie International

Pao Houa Her (born in Laos, 1982) is a Hmong American artist and assistant professor in photography and moving images at the University of Minnesota. She holds an MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art (2012) and a BFA in photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2009). Her’s work has been presented as a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2022–23 and she was included as part of the Whitney Biennial in 2022. In 2023, Her was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is represented by the Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.
Godfre Leung is an art critic and curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ First Nations. His writing has appeared in ArtAsiaPacific, C Magazine, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. At CAG, he has organized exhibitions by Dionne Lee, Sesemiya, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. In 2020, he curated PHH Emplotment at Or Gallery.
Kong Pheng Pha is assistant professor of critical Hmong studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He is currently working on two books, including a forthcoming monograph tentatively titled Queer Refugeeism: Constructions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hmong Diaspora.
Audrey Sands is an independent curator and photo historian. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a curatorial fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Henry Luce/ACLS Fellowship in American Art. From 2019 to 2022, she was the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson, Arizona, a joint appointment with the Phoenix Art Museum.
Mai Der Vang is an author and poet. She is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing MFA Program at Fresno State University.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and the author of numerous books, including The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (2005), and Somewhere in the Unknown World (2020). She is also a recipient of the A. P. Anderson Award for her contributions to Minnesota’s cultural and artistic life, and a Soros, McKnight, and Guggenheim fellowship.